Flybe axes 300 jobs

Around 300 jobs are to be axed at UK regional airline Flybe as it battles to slash costs by £35m (€41m) to stem losses.

The Exeter-based carrier announced plans to cut around 10% of its 3,000-strong UK workforce and is considering outsourcing further support functions, including ground handling and onboard catering.

Support and production roles such as human resources and IT will be affected by the jobs cull, while around a fifth of its management team is being cut.

The group, which flies from airports including Bristol, Cardiff, Doncaster, Edinburgh and East Midlands, is also putting its network of 13 UK bases under review and will give further details in the summer.

Flybe, which outsourced its call centre last month in a move impacting 55 jobs, slumped into the red by £1.3m (€1.5m) in the six months to September 30 against profits of £14.3m (€17m) a year earlier.

It blamed the loss on high fuel costs and falling numbers of fliers.

Quarterly figures today revealed a 1.7% improvement in the number of passengers flown to 1.8 million in the three months to December 31, but passenger revenues fell 1.2% to £136.9m and costs increased by an equivalent of 0.8% per seat.

Andrew Knuckey, chief financial officer of Flybe, said wider economic pressures and the impact of air passenger duty hikes in recent years meant it “had no choice” but to cut jobs to bring costs down.